Macroeconomic Data 2006
Population – 5,387,285
GDP growth – 8.3%
Unemployment – 11.1%
Inflation – 4.2%
Export volume – 37,424 Million EUR
Import volume – 40,215 Million EUR
Slovakia: Economic Figures
Slovakia is located in the heart of Europe on the crossroads between Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Austria. Flat taxes, liberal labor code and developed logistics activities are attractive for foreign investors. In the past, two historically important routes – the Amber path and the Bohemian path – led through Slovakia. They were not only important commercial trading routes for such commodities as gold, amber and furs, they also served as communication links, which facilitated relations between various nationalities and countries.
Central Europe is developing faster than the rest of Europe since the end of the 90s. Slovakia had one of the highest GDP growths in the European Union in 2006. Expectations from the Slovak government are up to 10% for the year 2007.
The greatest asset towards the GDP creation was in the field of industrial production, predominantly in the production of machines, electric devices and transport vehicles. In 2008 the automotive industry will create more than 50% of the Slovak industrial production and parts of the automotive industry will reach 60% in export with more than 100,000 people employed.
This economic growth causes increasing export and demand for personnel. The unemployment rate has reached 11.1% in 2006. It is still two times higher than EU average. The Slovak workforce consists of approx. 2.2 million people: 1.9 million employees and 300,000 entrepreneurs (68.7% without employees).
In 2005 the export of Slovakia is largely oriented towards OECD countries (90% of the total export) and EU countries (85%). Germany (26% of export), Czech Republic (14%) and Austria (7%) belong to the most important business partners of Slovakia.
